integrative medicine

November 12, 2020

Integrative Medicine’s Most Intentional Intersection: SIO and ASCO to Produce 3 New Oncology Guidelines

The early “integrative medicine” period clearly was one of “non-integrated integration.” The hospital or insurer wanted to throw the consumer an integrative bone in the competitive marketplace. They produced stand-alone integrative clinics or a carve-out insurance products. Offerings, in these forms, serve dual purposes. The medical delivery organization or insurer pleases patients by offering a little yoga, or acupuncture, or manipulative therapy or massage. At the same time, the non-integrated nature of what is offered pleases medical leadership: they are not asked to take the integrative methods seriously. They needn’t cross the medical-cultural divide to weigh whether the integrative approaches may be better than usual care. For most of the past decade, the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) has been building bridges across the chasm. Twice they’ve developed integrative oncology guidelines with mainstream oncology organizations. Now, through an unrestricted grant from the Samueli Foundation, SIO and the influential American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) are commencing a project to raise three additional girders to bridge treatments.
October 25, 2020

How the Scientologists Muzzled the AMA and Other Serendipity in the Movement for Integrative Health and Medicine

Caught up in a movement, one likes to assign causality to explain advances. A pressure applied in one place brings movement in the other. The set of collaborating entities manage to get to a policy table and push something positive through. A story begins to accumulate. Yet a close reading finds also influences of what that ancients might have called fate. The New Age may associate these with intention. I enjoy thinking of these as serendipity. I have accumulated a few favorites for the integrative health and medicine field. They begin with the circumstance of my own connection.  None is more striking than that which I encountered in a new publication on the influential Wilk vs. the AMA trial that muzzled the AMA’s worst bigotry toward non-pharma approaches. It turns out that L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, may be credited with opening the integrative era.
October 23, 2020

Where the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Meets Integrative Medicine: University Hospitals’ Connor Integrative Health Network

Some like to refer to major change agents in the integrative health field as “rock stars.” To the extent that this applies, a key leader of real world integrative health research, Jeffery Dusek, PhD and the chief cat herder in the universe of professional acupuncturists, David Miller, MD, LAc, belong on album covers. These images come to mind as Francoise Adan, MD, the director of the University Hospitals Connor Integrative Health Network (CIHN) has attracted each to work there. The “Connor” in the name of the system-wide integrative model refers to a philanthropic couple who also happen to be generous donors to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. I called Adan and her two colleagues to find out more  about what their visions are as these front-men join the CIHN band.
October 10, 2020

Distillations of 5 Key Factors from the USA Integrative Movement for India’s NITI Aayog/Policy Commission

Via Bhushan Patwardhan, PhD, an editorial board member at JACM-Paradigm, Practice and Policy Advancing Integrative Health (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine), I was invited to write a backgrounder and participate in an October 8, 2020 presentation to the “Committee on Formulation of Integrative Health Policy” of India’s National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog). Aayog is a Hindi term for “policy commission.”  I was introduced to the Committee by Vinod Paul, MD, who heads up the Health and Nutrition “verticals” for the NITI Aayog. The policy commission is developing directions across a range of India’s strategic interests. This Committee’s charge is to make recommendations on implementing integrative health country-wide. In my presentation, I chose to focus on 5 Key Factors learned on the ground here. I closed by sharing shared one remarkable model.